It Never Got Weird Enough for Me

Star Wars: The Farce Unleashed

Lucas Arts was never known for making the best games but they shouldn’t be panned as making the worst games either. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed falls directly into the same mold.

The game is based outside of the storyline of the movies. You first play as Darth Vader as you ravage the Wookie home world. Here you find who will be the main character of the story, the son of a Jedi knight. This young man will become Vader’s secret apprentice, Starkiller, and be sent as his minion to seek out and destroy any remaining Jedi in the universe. As the story progresses, Starkiller infiltrates the growing Rebel Alliance that is forming to stand against the Empire and comes to question his loyalties. You must take Starkiller through his trials and find his true destiny.

There are some fairly good things to mention about this game but there are a few not so good things. The plot of the story is well written and developed. It also works well within in the context of the Star Wars universe. It is able to add story content to the movies of the franchise but stay true to them as well. There are mentions of characters and events from the films, along with character cameos other than Vader and the Emperor. I think too many gamers(too many being any) wanted a game that either was one of the movies or had you playing directly a Jedi knight. A game based solely on reliving any of the movies would have been terrible since you would have just been re-enacting the movie and there is no adventure in that. Also, you can’t create the same feel that any of the movies had in a game. Besides, if I want to experience the movie I can just watch it, whereas if I want to play a game I’d like to play a game that had some new material to cover. The game’s graphics were well on par with what could be expected at the time of its release in late 2008. It did suffer from some repetitive game play where enemies were constantly recycled. It is pretty easy to tell you are fighting essentially the same enemies when little more than their color changes.

All in all though, this is a fine piece of the Star Wars universe. Given that it has been out for awhile you should easily be able to find it on the cheap. I got this at GameStop for $4.49 during a promotion but it lists for $6.99 at the time of this writing. Amazon is asking almost $20 for a new copy. I would definitely recommend the game for any total price under $10.